Bowman lowered a shoulder, twisted his body a little to one side. Then he spoke with savage satisfaction: “All right, Alexandria, now you’ve got a gun and I’ve got a gun. But you’ve got that cheap .22 and I’m holding a .45. You shoot me, I spend some time in the hospital getting patched up. I shoot you, pal, you’re not just history, you’re archaeology.” He laughed loudly at his own wit. “Now put your little toy away and we’ll talk.”
“I do not believe you have a weapon,” Nicholas Alexandria said.
“The more fool you,” Bowman answered. “My partner didn’t believe in packing a gun, and now the fool is dead. I’m a lot of things, but I’m no fool.”
“He has it,” Gina Tellini said. “I can see his hand on it.”
“You would say the same in any case.” Nicholas Alexandria’s eyes did not move toward her. To Bowman, he said: “Shooting through the front of your desk does not strike me as likely to produce the results you would desire.”
Bowman leaned back in his chair. One of his feet left the nubby, mustard-colored wool rug for a moment. It slammed against the inside of the center panel of the desk. The panel bowed outward. At the sudden crash, Nicholas Alexandria’s finger tightened on the trigger. Then it eased again. Bowman’s voice was complacent: “Cheap plywood, varnished to look like mahogany. A slug won’t even know it’s there.”
Alexandria’s mouth screwed tight, as if he were about to kiss someone he did not like. He slid the revolver back into the inner pocket of his jacket. As if he had never taken it out, he said, “Perhaps Miss Tellini did not see fit to tell you the Maltese Elephant—a Maltese Elephant, I should say—is in San Francisco now.”
“No, she didn’t tell me that,” Miles Bowman said. He looked Gina Tellini up and down. Now her eyes were as flat and opaque as Nicholas Alexandria’s. Bowman turned back to the man in the velvet jacket. “So what do you want me to do about it? Find this elephant and sell it to the circus?”
Nicholas Alexandria rose and bowed. “I see I am being mocked. I shall return another time, in the hope of finding you alone and serious.”
“Sorry you feel that way.” Bowman also got up. He came around the desk and stood towering over Nicholas Alexandria as he opened the door to let the slighter man out of the inner office.
Alexandria raised one finger. “A moment. Did you truly have a pistol?”
Bowman reached under his jacket. The motion exposed a battered leather holster on his right hip. He pulled out the Colt Model 1911A and let it lie, heavy and ugly and black, in his palm. It bore no frill, no ornament, no chromium. It was a killing machine, nothing else. Nicholas Alexandria stared at it. He let out a small, gasping sigh.
“I never bluff,” Bowman said. “No percentage to it.” He shifted the pistol in his hand. His fingers closed on the checkered grip. With a motion astonishingly fast from such a heavyset man, he slammed the Colt’s hard steel barrel against the side of Alexandria’s face. “Remember that.”
The blow knocked Alexandria back two paces. He staggered but did not fall. The raised foresight had cut his cheek. Blood dripped onto his jacket. Slowly he removed the silk handkerchief from his breast pocket. He dabbed at the jacket, then raised the handkerchief to his face. “I shall remember, Mr. Bowman,” he whispered hoarsely. “Rely on it.”
He walked past Hester Prine without looking at her, and out of the office.
Gina Tellini brought her hands together several times, clapping without sound. “Now I know you will be able to protect me—Miles.” She lingered half a heartbeat over his Christian name.
He shrugged. “All in a day’s work. You have anything you want to tell me about this Maltese Elephant?”
Those quicksilver eyes betrayed an instant’s alarm. Then they were her servants again. She shook her head. “I can’t, not yet,” she said huskily.
“Have it your way.” Bowman’s thick shoulders moved up and down once more. “You’re going to, or Alexandria will, or somebody.” He watched her. She stood very still, like a small, hunted animal. He shrugged a third time, motioned for her to precede him out of the inner office. “See you later.”
When her footsteps could no longer be heard in the hall, he turned to Hester Prine. “I’m going home.” He checked his wristwatch. “Quarter past seven already. Jesus, where does the time get to?” He set his hand on her shoulder. “Go on back to your place, too. To hell with all this.”
She did not look at him. “I have some more typing to do,” she said tonelessly.
“Have it your way,” Bowman said, as he had to Gina Tellini. He closed the outer door—now it read BOWMAN, in letters bigger than BOWMAN & TRENCHER had been painted—and strolled down the hall to the elevator.
As he walked, he whistled “Look for the Silver Lining. ” He whistled out of tune. The elevator boy looked at him as he got into the cage. He looked back. The elevator boy suddenly got busy with the buttons and took him to the ground floor.
He walked across the street to the garage where he kept his Chevrolet. He threw the kid on the comer a nickel. The kid handed him a copy of the San Francisco News. He tossed it into the front seat of the car. The starter whined when he turned the key. Coughing, the motor finally caught. He put the Chevrolet in gear and drove home.
The house on Thirty-third Avenue in the Sunset district needed a coat of paint. The houses to which it was joined on either side had been painted recently, one blue, the other a sort of rose pink. That made the faded, blotchy yellow surface look all the shabbier.
Bowman bounded up the steps two at a time. He turned the key in the Yale lock, mashed his thumb down on the latch. With a click like a bad knee, the door opened.
The interior was all plush and cheap velvet and curlicued wood and overstuffed furniture. “Is that you, honey?” Eva’s voice wafted out of the kitchen with the smell of pot roast and onions. She sounded nervous.
“Who else do you know with a key?” Bowman asked. He scaled his hat toward the couch. It fell short and landed on the fringe of the throw rug under the coffee table. He dropped the News onto the table.
Eva came out and stood in the kitchen doorway. He walked over, kissed her perfunctorily. They had been married thirteen years. She was ten years the younger. She was about the age Tom Trencher had been. Trencher wouldn’t get any older.
Eva’s short red curls got their color from a bottle. They’d been the same color when he married her, and from the same source. They went well with her green eyes. She was twenty pounds heavier now than when they’d walked down the aisle, but bigboned enough to carry the pounds well. She wore a ruffled apron over a middie blouse and a cotton skirt striped brightly in gold and blue.
Her smile was a little too wide. It showed too many teeth. “Do the police know anything more about— who killed Tom?” She looked at the point of his chin, not his eyes.
“If they do, they haven’t told me. I didn’t talk with ’em today.” He shrugged. “Get me a drink.”
“Sure, honey.” She hurried away. She opened the pantry, then the icebox, and came back with a tumbler of bourbon on the rocks. “Here.” That too-ingratiating smile still masked her face.
Bowman drank half the tumbler with two long swallows. He exhaled, long and reverently, and held up the glass to scrutinize its deep amber contents against the light bulb in the kitchen ceiling lamp. “This is the medicine,” he announced, and finished the bourbon. He handed Eva the glass. “Fix me another one of these with supper.”
“Sure, Miles,” she said. “We ought to be just about ready.” The pot lid clanked as she lifted it off to check the roast. She set it back on the big iron pot. The oven door hinge squeaked. “The meat is done, and so are the potatoes. I’ll set the table and get you your drink.”